For conventional light emitting device (LED) packages, a LED chip is mounted onto the sub-mount using the epoxy put thereon to form a LED element, and the process is called “Die Bonding”. Typically, the epoxy used in “Die Bonding” can be silver filled epoxy or other non-conductive resin. Then, the LED elements are assembled onto the circuit board. For a flip-chip LED, the p-type conductive layer and the n-type conductive layer are exposed on the same side to have the positive electrode and the negative electrode on the same side of the LED structure. And the LED structure with the positive electrode and the negative electrode is flipped and disposed on the solder without wire bonding. However, conventional flip-chip LEDs still require “Dicing” and “Die Bonding” for connecting and mounting the circuit board. If the electrodes of flip-chip LEDs have large contact area to be directly connected to the circuit board, a number of conventional packaging processes for LEDs can be skipped.
The operating current of a conventional LED is typically several tens to several hundreds of mAs. Therefore, the brightness of a conventional LED is not suitable for illumination purpose. When lots of LEDs are assembled into an LED lamp to improve the brightness, the volume of the LED lamp increases accordingly, which results in the loss of its market competitiveness. Therefore, to improve the brightness of a single LED is a necessary approach. However, as the LED advances towards high brightness, the operating current and power of a single LED become several times to several hundred times than those that a conventional LED requires. For example, the operating current of a high brightness LED is about several hundreds of mAs to several Amps (A). As a result, the heat generated by the LED becomes an important issue. “Heat” seriously affects the performance of LEDs; for example, the thermal effect influences the wavelength of lights emitted from the LED, reduces the brightness of lights generated from the semiconductor device, and damages the LED device. Therefore, how to dissipate heat generated by the high power LED become the important issue of the LEDs.
U.S. Applications Nos. 2004/0188696 and 2004/0203189 disclosed a LED package and the method for manufacturing the same based on the Surface Mount Technology (SMT). Each LED package includes a LED chip, and each chip is flip-chip bonded onto a frontside of the sub-mount wafer using boning bump. A plurality of arrays of openings are drilled into the electrically insulating sub-mount wafer. A metal is applied to the drilled openings to produce a plurality of via arrays. The p-type and n-type contacts of each flip-chip bonded LED electrically communicate with a solderable backside of the sub-mount wafer through a via array. A thermal conduction path is provided for thermally conducting heat from the flip-chip bonded LED chip to the solderable backside of the sub-mount wafer. Subsequent to the flip-chip bonding, the sub-mount wafer is separated to produce the surface mount LED packages.
However in U.S. Applications Nos. 2004/0188696 and 2004/0203189, it requires drilled via array with filled metal within the sub-mount wafer and thus increases the manufacturing cost. Furthermore, it becomes complicated to flip-chip bond each chip onto the sub-mount wafer using bonding bump. Therefore, it would be beneficial if the LED packages have excellent thermal conductive paths without the provision of the sub-mount wafers.